So I am sometimes like a tree rustling over a gravesite and making real the dream of the one its living roots embrace:
A dream once lost among sorrows and songs
A dream once lost among sorrows and songs
His words still her. Maret becomes as motionless as the forest before a storm. Only her quill moves, it dances a trembling circle. All he can think is how her page is now ruined, how his admission is not so beautiful upon the page as her words. His lips drop into a bow of sorrow. Regret gathers in dark shadows along the seam of his mouth.
If feels like an eternity that she stands, still as stone. The wild-wood boy dares not breathe as he watches her. This feels worse than before a storm. He does not wish to know what will come in place of a storm. He fears what she will be when motion finally returns to her ivory bones and white-dove heart.
He moves to touch her. He does. The fae boy presses his muzzle to the muscle of her neck, so like a swan, he thinks. He breathes. He expects that her skin should be hard like marble and cool like gold metal. But she isn’t. Maret is as warm and soft as he remembers.
She moves and he darts back, swift as a swallow. He has learned to touch others, but to be touched in turn, that he is still not wholly comfortable with. Not yet. Not yet. Her quill lowers. It seems to take forever until it touches the paper. All the while his eyes tracked its slow descent. He stands, poised. A wild boy trained by nature to flee or fight at the first sign of danger. Never has he thought Maret dangerous. Never will he think her dangerous. But he knows girls are strange, confusing creatures. Leonidas does not want her ire.
Steady eyes watch her from beneath the thick tangles of his forelock sewn through with woodland greens (blades of grasses, stems of flowers, vines and leaves). His antlers stand as proud as he, so much like a woodland prince. Their eyes meet, when hers finally rise enough to snag upon his. He blinks, the only sign of his wariness. His breath flutters in his lungs. He breathes out slow, slow and his sigh begs her to speak. Was it wrong, to think of the lake as theirs? He could not bear to go alone, or take anyone else with him - not that he had anyone.
“I did.” Leonidas rushes to reply when she finally speaks. Her apology follows and he relaxes in its wake. His head lowers, his shoulders softening, exposing him as only a prince, not yet a king of his wood. But he will ascend, because he is a boy whose self-appointed kingdom of flowers and roots and wild, untameable things has made him grow up too fast.
“Will you?” He asks of her promise and does not release her eyes. He holds no accusation, only hope. “The waters are lost without you.” The boy tells her. For the way the waters sang in the cave, their sound was wrong and full of sorrow. “Will you write me your promise upon your paper?” He asks as his eyes flit keenly to the open page and its tremulous circle. “And sign it.” Leonidas dares to whisper. For he wants to see her name upon the page, to carry it with him that he might learn the shape of it.
@Maret <3
